Many home owners enjoy decorating the outside of their property with symbols celebrating different holidays or seasons, for example, Xmas trees, fairy lights, holly wreaths, pumpkins and figurines such as Santa Claus and Reindeer. It is often desired to display such decorations as prominently as possible for maximum exposure and enjoyment by a passer-by or neighbor.
One fixture common to most individual houses is the United States Postal Service mailbox which is usually a standardized rectanguloid box with an arcuate top. The mailbox usually stands on a post, in a most prominent position in the front yard of each house, adjacent the street so that it is immediately noticed by the mailman and passers-by.
Numerous attempts have been made over many years to provide mailboxes with decorative or symbolic coverings which do not interfere with the basic mailbox function and contravene U.S. Post Office Regulations.
U.S. design patent 287,899 issued in 1987 and U.S. design patent 322,418 issued to White in 1991 teach examples of prior approaches having inside profiles conforming to the mailbox shape, for mounting thereon.
However, such prior covers which have a solid or three dimensional structure for maximum decorative effect are of relatively complex, multipart construction and commensurately expensive to manufacture. Unless of sufficiently weighty, and, as a result, relatively expensive construction, prior decorative covers can also be relatively time consuming and fiddlesome to attach releasably to the mailbox for removal after an event or season depicted by the cover has passed.